Landing Gear Up

Uh... glue gear doors to wheel wells.

And don't forget to leave the landing gear and wheels off first 

Sorry.couldn't resist being a wise ass.

In addition to the LG doors closed, you need to represent rotating props if a prop plane, and build some sort of stand and base.  Stands can be either wire, or clear plastic.  I am doing a Minicraft Stratocruiser for in-flight display currently.

And unless you're building a drone, don't forget to include at least one pilot in the cockpit !  

HP,

It depends on whether you have a subject that shows the wheels or not i.e. P-40, DC-3, Bf 109. or one that doesn't i.e. most jets, P-51, F190 ETC.

Which subject are you building?

A big problem I've found is many kits are specifically designed to only pose with gear down, so some test fitting is required.  

Things to look out for are gear doors that don't fit the shape of the landing bay area.  Sometimes,  tires are too thick and  prevent the cover door from closing flush with the under wing surface - but this is only a problem if a portion of the wheel is still visible when the gear is in the up position.

Unless hanging from the ceiling, some kind of base is a  good idea.  I've seen one modeler use magnets as a way of attaching the aircraft to a rod.  Never tried it myself, but I like that idea because you don't have to drill a hole in the bottom of the model.

Rotating props I'd consider optional.  I've seen clear discs and  the specially designed prob blur products used.  They do look quite good from the front and back views, but not so much from a side profile.  You could always leave the prob blades off, and paint the nose cone accordingly.

regards,

Jack

If you want realistic spinning props then check here: http://www.propblur.com/

I don't really care for prop blur myself. Just me.

Uhhh...genius... Without adequate support they tend to fall into the wheel well.  Maybe I should have been more specific.  Glad I joined the forum?

Thanks Jack.  One earnest response!  Suppose the ambiguity associated with my inquiry left me open to obvious and not very creative ridicule.  

Anyway, the issue is how to support the doors prior to gluing them in, since there is no explicit support for the doors in the closed/up position.  I'm building two 1:48 scale F4U1-D Corsairs, one from Academy and the other Tamiya. I've considered putty of some kind, but don't like the idea of increasing the weight of the model just for this purpose.  Also, thought of creating a "shelf" for the edge of the door to sit on, but that too seemed to be a little excessive in regards to time and the fact that my fingers barely fit into the wheel wells.  

Tojo72

And don't forget to leave the landing gear and wheels off first 

 

Sorry.couldn't resist being a wise ass.

Hey, that's much, much better than being a dumb ass!!  

I'm not a fan of "spinning" props either (unless the prop is actually spinning).

When you mount a model on a stand, or hang it from overhead, with its landing gear retracted, you are by definition "stopping action." It seems to me that a motionless propeller in such a situation is no more inappropriate than a motionless airframe. A model of an F-14 with wings swept and landing gear retracted is, by definition, unrealistic. If you were actually looking at a real F-14 in that configuration, it would be moving so fast that you couldn't see it.

One of the British magazines once published an interesting article by an aviation artist. He argued against showing rotating props as "pine tree shapes" mounted on the hub - like the ones shown above. His logic was that a moving propeller doesn't look like that to the human eye. The effect only appears in photographs. (It's created by the fact that the prop is moving faster than the camera's shutter.)

My eye is happy with a frozen prop. But I also like the look of a motorized one - if the mechanical and electrical problems are handled well.

As I looked at their gallery, the prop spinning representation looked pretty real to me. I plan on putting four on my in-flight Super Connie when I get around to building it..

There are some of the angles of the prop blur that look ok, but it just looks to metal and made up to me. I have seen however, and I found a tutorial I've tried and turned out pretty well for my first time. It took some work but I liked the results. (see my post in aircraft "1/72 Airfix Grumman Duck" for the results).

Here it the link to the tutorial.

gregers.fr.yuku.com/.../11537

If you're building a plane that has part of the wheel/oleo showing you also need to make sure that the oleo is at full extension (pay attention to the "scissors" that keep the oleos in place. They should be almost fully extended).Sometimes the strut will be too short to fit properly unless the oleo is fully extended.

Dave

MC

That looks very good too and way cheaper than the Prop Blurs. I just may try this method out. Thanks for posting it.

I too see nothing wrong with just the regular plastic prop. It's a snapshot in a moment of time, the prop does not need to be nor need to look like it is spinning. If you are doing an action diorama, however, actual spinning props are a must in my opinion.

As to tips to build a landing gear up plane, make sure you have a pilot carefully test fit, test fit, and test fit some more, before you glue the wheel wells shut. I've found that gluing a strip of styrene to serve as a sort of ledge to keep the doors from falling into the gear bay quite helpful.

Thanks Josiah.  I was coming to the same conclusion; a piece of styrene strip.  In the kits I used to build, potentially less accurate kits, the option existed as well as the built in ledges.  

I'm working on two 1;48, F4U-1D Corsairs; Tamiya and Academy.  Neither, obviously, shows the wheels, however there is no ledge to support the LG doors in the up position, like there was on kits I built when I was a kid. So to get the doors flush with the wing surface, I'll have to install styrene ledges myself.  I was just wondering if there was a simpler method than that.  I considered modeling clay, putty of some type, but keep returning to gluing strips of just the right depth into the wheel bays so that the doors when glued are flush with the wings.

Maybe not as accurate, I enjoyed the option to display the model in either configuration.

Thanks

One idea I've heard of but never tried is to fill the wheel wells with clay to give support to the doors as you glue them in. And yes, test fitting is a must!

One reason I like some representation of a spinning prop is that the eye has a fairly low shutter speed, and to the eye, even at the briefest glance, the prop is blurred.  I like to show what the eye would see if the viewer were actually watching a flying prop aircraft.  With most jets you don't see much unless they are in AB, so jets need nothing but I do like some method of representing rotating props.